This Summer’s Most Inane Hamptons Police Reports

The Hamptons are supposed to be a respite, from the relentless heat hanging outside Park Avenue penthouses, the mountains of rotting garbage piling outside the local spin studio, the sweat beading off the town-car driver’s neck. The beach enclave, just a couple hours’ drive on the Long Island Expressway (or a half hour by helicopter), is a place to escape all that. It’s a place to enjoy the simple things in life—bringing a pint of local strawberries to Steve Cohen’s house down the road; washing the Tesla in your manicured front lawn; waving to Martha Stewart on Main Beach or Jerry Seinfeld on Further Lane.

But just because Hamptons-goers are able to escape the city swelter, doesn’t mean there’s no trouble in paradise. In fact, the East End was a hotbed of police activity this summer, with petty thieves, invisible children, and big-time scammers running amok amidst the hedge-grow.

There was the usual healthy dose of vandalism. A black Maserati parked outside of nightclub Leo in East Hampton was keyed so severely that its owner estimated it would cost $1,000 to repair. Several BMWs had their windows bashed in (serves them right for not driving a Maserati), and, it being an election year, some of the defacing turned political. It all started back in July, when a Sag Harbor woman called police to inform them that a stealth G.O.P. supporter scrawled the name “Trump” in chalk across several buildings on Main Street. A week later, the conservative bandit struck again, this time also gluing milk cartons onto the exterior of a pharmacy, a hardware store, and a local restaurant. But lest you think the Hamptons were only unsafe for Democrats, an Amagansett man had the “Veterans for Trump” sign he posted in his yard knocked over and broken. Elections may be decided in swing states, but this season, they’re fought over, one idiotic act of political defiance at a time, out East.

Unsurprisingly, many treasured items were carelessly lost or carefully stolen. A $700 blue adult tricycle, for example, was stolen off a Montauk lawn in the middle of a June night. Two photographs worth $12,500 each—one of David Bowie, the other of the Beatles—were swiped from a storage container in Sag Harbor. One woman, who took off her “one of a kind” $4,000 engagement ring when she went to apply sunscreen, walked away U.V.-protected but ringless. Unbelievably, the ring was not there once she realized she had left it behind. Finders keepers.

Some crimes were more sophisticated, befitting the well-heeled vicinage. And nothing screams “erudite” quite like the phony I.R.S. scam that some smart, entrepreneurial individuals were running. They would call Hamptons residents, pretending to be federal agents, and threaten to sue if they did not send them money. Finally, the Airbnb and Craigslist-economy chickens came home to roost this summer, as several people who wrongly believed they were sending thousands of dollars to rent out homes arrived at the designated addresses only to find they had been set up. Victims of the grift paid out huge chunks of change, and then found they had no house to stay in, either. Other scams, meanwhile, were relatively victimless: two separate individuals were caught using phony handicap cards in order to enjoy prime parking spaces. Both individuals had the cards confiscated.

Loud noises continued to be a pressing social ill in the summer of 2016. When one Lily Pond Lane resident was bothered by a neighbor’s hedges being trimmed—on a Sunday, no less—police were called in. As they were a month earlier, in Sag Harbor, when the joyful clamor emanating from a 10-year-old’s birthday party became too bothersome for a neighbor.

Law enforcement officers were also summoned to handle situations far less deserving of their time than breaking up a pre-teen’s birthday party. One East Hampton woman called to report a leaky toilet; she was told to call a plumber. A man showed up to police headquarters in June to inform them that he refused to pay his bill for services rendered at a nearby nail salon because it had used “a noxious, apparently illegal chemical.” Two children were reported missing in July. One was found hiding under the pillows on her couch; the other was found in the very same pharmacy where the child’s father had brought and subsequently misplaced him. At another drug store in East Hampton, police were notified when an owner-less dog was spotted roaming the aisles.

Most puzzling, however, was a call made by an East Hampton resident who reported hearing what he thought were gunshots. He wasn’t wrong. Police informed him that the noise was coming from a Civil War re-enactment taking place at a nearby farm fair. The muskets, like the garden vegetables, were heirloom.